Infatuation (A-Z Story Game)
by claraowl
Summary: What if Kyoko had not laughed, but cried? What would Sho have done, and what would he consider if shown this option now? One-sided Sho/Kyoko oneshot. Written as the "I" entry of the A-Z Story Game.


**Hello, and welcome to the "I" entry for the A-Z story game: "Infatuation"!**

**I do not own Skip Beat. ;) **

**The given objective was to bash Sho. If you love Sho, you have been warned. If not… *shrugs* **

**As a general rule, I try not to bash characters too much, so I tried to stir some pity as well. **

**Please enjoy~!**

He turned, and there she stood. She was still in her Moz fast-food uniform; the box of fries and burgers had dropped from her limp hands and landed on the floor. Her head was down; he could not see her eyes.

"Sho… you didn't like me because I'm boring and have no sex appeal… yet you took me to Tokyo because it was convenient?" She stood there, stock-still.

He blinked. Wasn't she going to react? She'd reacted before… when she'd heard him, and thrown the box at him; she'd declared her revenge – was this a dream? But it seemed so real… she even looked as she had back then, always worn to the bone for him.

"Kyoko?"

She slumped onto the back of the couch; he expected her to start laughing, as she had back then. But he heard no sounds of laughter, no gasps of irony. Yes, her shoulders were shaking, but…

No.

_No._

No, it couldn't be. Yes, he'd told her, then, not to cry, saying that it was annoying.

She hadn't cried; she'd laughed and declared her revenge after setting those weird… things after him.

So why wasn't she laughing? This was a memory of sorts, right?

Or was he being given another chance?

Then _why _couldn't he move?

Her shoulders shook harder.

_No, please no. Anything but that. Laugh. Throw fries at me. Try to choke me with my own choker again. Please don't – _

Her knees gave out and she slumped to the floor, hands falling to her lap. Tears streamed openly down her face, as they had when she'd cried about her mother, as they had during his PV. She sat there, not even attempting to stem the flow, letting the tears flow down her face… a face that showed emotion nowhere but the eyes. He took one look at her eyes and wanted to do great, terrible things to rid them of that broken, hopeless look. He wanted to sing to her, take her in his arms and sweep her back to Kyoto, away from show biz and all its dangers and heartbreak. He wanted to go back to where they'd been happy, before he'd let his pride get in the way – he wanted to go back to the place and time where he had been able to freely care for her, to the time when his parents had initially asked if he'd like to have Kyoko as his bride one day… and he'd been able to say yes without hesitation, just as she had.

He would be willing to never sing another note in his life, if only those tears would stop and the happiness would return to her eyes.

If only that sadness hadn't been put there by him. If only he could've just gone out and made whoever dared make her cry pay… if only, if only….

If only he could openly love her as he wanted to, now… if only he'd realized back then how much he needed her, rather than brushing it off as a slight, utterly shallow infatuation with the way her eyes sparkled when she was happy.

He took a few steps forward, away from Shoko. Kyoko sat there, unmoving in his – in his whatever this was, memory or new reality or whatever. He swallowed, and knelt down beside her.

Okay, he was next to her. Now what on earth was he supposed to do?

He could hug her and call her name, like he did with Mimori. Quick, easy, meaningless.

No. This was Kyoko. She didn't respond like normal girls; she needed something with meaning…but did he have anything he could give to her?

"Kyoko?" he whispered, his voice like a leaf dangling from a strand of spider silk on a windy day: dangerously close to flying into nothingness as it danced in the air.

She blinked, once, and more tears streamed down her cheeks. Her head tilted towards him slightly, just the barest tilt of her chin. She was listening, but only briefly. He'd better make this good, or she would vanish from his sight forever.

"Kyoko, I…" his voice wavered. Shoko was standing right there, watching this scene with wide eyes. She could hear everything he was saying to Kyoko… should he care? Was Kyoko as she was in this odd rendition of reality worth the sacrifice of his pride and future? Was the Kyoko he knew in his usual reality worth it all? Was the Kyoko he'd known in Kyoto worth everything else that he stood to lose if he didn't just let her go?

Hadn't she always been, and wouldn't she always be worth risking everything else he had?

If this was his new reality, the reality where she loved him still, couldn't he just apologize now and have her return to him – never really leave, even? Couldn't her sweet, devoted infatuation with him become something more lasting if he reciprocated? He could take care of her now, like he ought to have done then. He could sweep her up in his arms, act like the prince she'd always made him out to be. He could pay the rent, send her to high school, doll her up like he knew now that she wanted to be – he'd stop making her support him, and take his turn supporting her.

If she really wanted to, they could go back to the ryokan; he'd beg his parents' forgiveness. Or they could wait until they were both of age, and then just get married anyway. She wouldn't mind being kept out of the spotlight; she didn't need that kind of negative energy being thrown at her. He felt an urge to take care of her, to make up for what he'd done.

So why could he still not string the words together? Was he really that useless?

"Kyoko… hey… um…"

Apparently, yes. Her chin tilted away from him, and he could almost feel the wall going up between them – it was almost visible.

He put his hands on it. "Kyoko—"

_Why_ couldn't he say anything, sing anything of what he'd wanted to for ages, if only she would listen? _Why_ could he comfort any girl except the one for whom he'd found himself willing to give up the world?

But she _was_ the world, and he'd given her up once already, hadn't he?

Shoko was still watching. He found that he no longer cared. Sure, he'd been infatuated with her briefly, but that was his hormones talking. He knew Kyoko better than anyone, and she knew him inside and out, better than even his own parents did.

His pockets were bereft of tissues. He cursed himself, and tentatively tried to touch her shoulder. She flinched away from him, as if expecting a slap to punctuate her emotional pain with physical. His heart clenched, and then broke. She'd thought that he would intentionally inflict physical damage on her. He'd never meant to do that, not even when she argued with him about the Beagles.

He had no clue what to do with the girl before him, huddled in on herself. How could he help now where he had never been of any use before? If he so much as touched her… would she break?

_I am worthless._

Shoko was speaking now; she had kneeled down on Kyoko's other side, and was trying to coax her into accepting a handkerchief. Sho took the handkerchief from Shoko and shook his head, dismissing her. He needed to do this himself... but how?

_What can I possibly do to help?_

Carefully, as if she were as precious and rare as the Faberge eggs about which she so loved to daydream – which she was, he reminded himself – he leaned down to where he could see her face. Then, just as cautiously, he touched the fabric of Shoko's handkerchief to her damp skin. The tears did not stop flowing; her face held no reaction; her eyes did not show even a tiny spark of life anymore.

_How could I ever dream of being enough to do something?_

He swallowed, and helped her into a more upright position. She was cold and still in his arms, neither stiff nor relaxed. It was as if she were not there at all. He dared to cup her face, to meet her eyes. There was no reaction, no spark of recognition, from the girl. She was like an empty shell, hollow and lifeless upon the floor.

_Why did I ever think that I could achieve anything if I can't even make the girl I knew best smile when she's sad?_

She was not responding; he felt like crying, himself, as he took her by the shoulders, roughly now. His breathing was erratic as he shook her, trying to get any sort of reaction – anything at all. Anything is better than nothing – please, laugh, hate, and swear revenge all over again. Just don't cry without word or movement. Anything but that. Please.

_Why can't I ever do anything to help the girl I loved – love?_

"Kyoko… say something… anything…" he murmured, frantic now, brushing the tears distractedly from her face as they kept falling, falling….

_No… Kyoko, no! Why can't I help you? _

"Please…"

_ Isn't there anything I can do? _

"Kyoko, please, please stop crying… I'll do anything you want, just please stop…."

_ Why did I treat you that way, when I had the world?_

"I'm begging you – Kyoko, say something, dammit!"

_She's…lifeless. How could I do this to her, suck her life out for so long?_

"Kyoko…" he choked slightly on his words, and finally pulled her into an embrace. He felt, for a fraction of a second, her hands tighten in the cloth of his shirt; then they dropped away, not holding her to or away from him… not doing anything at all.

_Where's her fire, her spark?_

This girl before him was nothing but a shadow of her potential, and he had made her that way. Perhaps, if he hadn't used her from the beginning, she would've nurtured that spark all along. Maybe, just maybe, if that spark had been nurtured, he would've realized how amazing she was… before it was too late.

_Where's _my_ Kyoko?_

She can't be gone by his hand – he had no blade, just words. Yet which is more painful – a physical or emotional wound? He knew which lasted longer if left to its own devices… but what devices did this shell of a girl have? She wasn't even the Kyoko of _any_ time, not the Kyoko of then and definitely not the Kyoko of the other reality's now… and he was to blame. Of that, he was certain….

_But what could he do?_

He was powerless, yet held her to him. He dared not look into those golden eyes, for fear of the emptiness that came with the final extinguishing of her spark – the one her mother had nearly washed away in her storm, and the one that his words had blown out rather than ignited. He whispered, helplessly, into her ear, "Kyoko, I'm… I'm so sorr—"

She disintegrated from his arms into a pile of bone dust, and he awoke with a scream.

He gaped around the room, his heart beating madly and his breathing heavy as he realized that all of that had, indeed, been a dream. He had not traversed into some bizarre alternate reality. Kyoko had not cried, she had laughed; she had not been crushed by his betrayal, but emboldened by it. She still hated him, detested his existence; she had her spark. She was alive.

But, since he was feeling a bit insecure at the moment, what with having realized exactly how useless he was concerning her, he decided to call her and make sure she wasn't doing anything stupid – at least, that was his excuse to himself, and to her. He would never tell her how terrified he had been in that moment, nor how close he had been to crying.

Her phone was picked up on the second ring.

"Hey, Kyoko, shouldn't you be asleep by now? You need all the beauty sleep you can get. Or have you given up on that?" he drawled, internally appalled by his own words but unable to say anything else. He'd not woken her up about a bad dream since he was seven. He was _not_ going to start again now.

There was a brief, almost amused silence on the other end of the line before a voice that was most definitely not Kyoko's replied, "She is asleep, and she's beautiful even when she's bone-tired… even if that's something you never bothered to notice."

The line disconnected, leaving Sho to curl up in a ball of anger and self-loathing. The rest of his night was spent in sleepless self-reproach and failed attempts at phone calls.

On the other end of the phone call, the girl in question stirred in her sleep.

"Who was on the phone, Kuon?"

A deep chuckle came in reply, and the owner of the voice kissed the top of the head that rested on his chest. "A wrong number, love. Don't worry about it."

She glanced up, gave him a sleepy smile, and then returned to her dreams of faerie princes and magic lands.

In other words, it was another ordinary night in Tokyo… or at least as ordinary as Tokyo ever gets.

**The end! My given objective was to bash Sho… so I had him bash himself! Even his subconscious is mad at him for what he did to Kyoko… :)**

**I hope that you liked it! I kind of stitched two different ideas together for this. I hope that it came across well. Let me know what you think in a review! :D**

**Join the A-Z story game!**


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